In Part I of The Two Faces of Money we described what we call "the power structure that surrounds the Federal Reserve". Part of this power structure in effect alters our Constitution and our legal system in ways that favor the few at the expense of the many.

Importantly this power structure forms part of the global economic matrix - which increasingly requires various forms of military control in order to enforce. Popular author and journalist Thomas Friedman described the global economic system as one that required "an iron fist in a velvet glove." But with the still looming potential for total economic collapse around the globe, that velvet glove may be about to come off, out of necessity - UNLESS we understand money in the manner that our founding fathers did.

Our slide presentation provides a road map of sorts for the power structure that surrounds the Federal Reserve which was explained in Part I of The Two Faces of Money.

As a kind of quasi-foot note, it needs to be understood that while we discuss the Continuity of Government (COG) as one aspect of the shadow government in The Two Faces of Money which was published in 2007, there has been a relatively recent recognition of a second element of the shadow government, known as the "Deep State."

In a 2014 Bill Moyers interview, former GOP congressional staff member with the powerful House and Senate Budget Committees Mike Lofgren talked about what he calls the Deep State, a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, which is “out of control” and “unconstrained.” Within the Deep State elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. “It is … the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war.” Lofgren says the Deep State’s heart lies in Washington, DC, but its tentacles reach out to Wall Street, which Lofgren describes as “the ultimate backstop to the whole operation,” Silicon Valley and over 400,000 contractors, private citizens who have top-secret security clearances. Like any other bureaucracy, it’s groupthink that drives the Deep State."

Elaborating further The Deep State is the second shadow government (COG being the first) that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government. . .

The Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power, makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government. . .

It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.

It bears repeating that, as Lofgren says in the Moyers interview, Wall Street and our monetary/financial system "is the ultimate backdrop to the entire system."